Route reliability record
DTW→DEN
Detroit to Denver
- Flights
- 3,110
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,123 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 3,110 DTW to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 726 at 82.8% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.5% of the time and Saturday flights 82.5%, against 79.5% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.8% on time across 726 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,083 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
82.8% on time across 726 flights
These figures cover 3,110 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 726 | 82.8% | 63 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 486 | 82.5% | 80 min | 1.03% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,248 | 79.2% | 57 min | 0.16% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 73.9% | 60 min | 0.62% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DTW → DENDetroit to Denver | United Airlines | 82.2% | 82.8% | 0.69% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 302 15:32 |
| 2. DTW → DENDetroit to Denver | Frontier Airlines | 81.7% | 82.5% | 1.03% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DTW → DENDetroit to Denver | Delta Air Lines | 79.1% | 79.2% | 0.16% | 8am–11am, Sat | DL 1113 08:30 |
| 4. DTW → DENDetroit to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 73.4% | 73.9% | 0.62% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 33 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am387 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am872 flights85.8%
- 11am–2pm620 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm796 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm234 flights56.3%
- 8pm–5am201 flights71.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 89.5% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 872 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to DEN by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DTW to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.3%, a wide gap of 33.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.5%
- 8–11am85.8%
- 11am–2pm84.2%
- 2–5pm72.9%
- 5–8pm56.3%
- 8pm–5am71.0%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 62.9% on time, against 89.5% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 296 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.6%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 39,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 39,303 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,123 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg runs 78.1% on time across 3,109 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 3,110 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.5% on time and December 62.9%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,083 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to DEN questions
How often is DTW to DEN delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.5% of the 3,110 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 82.8% on time across 726 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.9%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.3%, 33 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on DTW to DEN?
December is the weakest month at 62.9% on time, compared with 89.5% in September. Across the year that is 27 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DTW to DEN82.8%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to DEN82.5%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to DEN79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to DEN73.9%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- United Airlines on-time record82.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DTW to DEN and DEN to DTW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.